Home-made cornmeal and yoghurt exfoliating scrub is a kitchen cosmetic I first tried as a teenager. My father, John, grew, harvested and ground the dried white corn in a maize mill on our farm.

Apart from being an effective exfoliant for removing dead skin cells, excess oil and dirt from your skin, the cornmeal and yoghurt combination leaves your skin ever so, smooth and soft - polished, would be another description. Using the cornmeal on its own would be as effective although scooping a teaspoon of each, as you go to make a paste, allows the mask mixture to be applied like a lotion to glide over the skin before massage scrubbing.

Combining with full fat yoghurt, will give the skin an extra moisturised feeling and feeding. As an alternative to yoghurt, try mixing cornmeal with raw honey which is also a beautiful skin-feeding beauty treatment. If you wish to add Lavender, Tea tree or Eucalyptus essential oil, for additional pampering, mix in a few drops of one or either of the oils to the bowl of paste (cornmeal and yoghurt) or to the quantity you require before applying.

Remove make-up beforehand if you are using this as a face exfoliant.

Once in a week application is recommended, although you may find the resultant clean feeling urges you want to do this more often!

​If you can obtain it, I've highlighted the use of Organic corn for this body scrub purpose and the reason is nowadays most corn is a genetically modified crop and wouldn't be a safe and recommended food ingredient to put on your skin or to be eaten.

Apparently, in Australia corn is not genetically modified but from the US, it is. With lax labelling laws you may not be able to read on the labels "contains GMO's" on anything that hasn't come from overseas.

Do not confuse corn meal with cornstarch as the former is simply ground up dry corn, which has a grainer texture than cornstarch. Cornmeal has a yellowish or creamy white colour whereas cornstarch is white, fine and powder-like.​